He had a confusingly contradictory face, had the Reverend Herbert E. Pyecroft -- for such she learned was his full name; a face customarily sedate and elderish, and then, almost without perceptible change, for swift moments oddly youthful; with a wide mouth, which would suddenly twist up at its right corner as though from some unholy quip of humor, and whose as sudden straightening into a solemn line would show that the unseemly humor had been exorcised.

How it could have come of that colorlessness, -- whether through long sickness or long residence in a tropical climate, -- was a question that perplexed another of the passengers, who would have expected to hear the lady speak any language in the world rather than English; and to whom her companion or attendant was hardly less than herself a mystery, -- being a dragon-like, elderish female, clearly a Yankee by birth, but apparently of many years 'absence from home.